Womack: How BBWAA voting predicts future Hall of Famers
From SABR member Graham Womack at Baseball Past and Present on January 14, 2015:
Around Hall of Fame voting time every year, I hear baseball fans exclaim that a certain player is never going in Cooperstown because they’ve fallen far short of the 75 percent of votes needed through the Baseball Writers Association of America for enshrinement.
I’m here to say that based on some recent research I undertook, these fans by and large don’t know what they’re talking about.
I recently went through every BBWAA vote since 1936, making a list of the 884 players who’ve received at least one vote and 221 more players who’ve appeared on the ballot and not gotten any votes. What I found: If a player gets even 20 percent of the writers vote, there’s a better than 50 percent chance they’re eventually going in. If they top 45 percent, their bid is more or less guaranteed. Not counting players currently on the ballot, 136 of the 139 players who’ve received at least 45 percent of the Hall of Fame vote from the writers are now enshrined.
There’s a question of causation or correlation between the BBWAA and Veterans Committee results that I don’t know I can answer here. There’s no proof, so far as I know at least, that the Veterans Committee cribs off the BBWAA to build its ballots. My gut is that the writers are a tough electorate and that any player who rises above 20 percent in the vote is a fairly popular candidate. I think the Veterans Committee would look to these players first even if the BBWAA wasn’t voting.
Read the full article here: http://baseballpastandpresent.com/2015/01/14/bbwaa-voting-helps-predict-future-hall-famers/
Originally published: January 14, 2015. Last Updated: January 14, 2015.